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| Titel |
Soil moisture trends in mountainous areas: a 50-yr analysis of modelled soil
moisture over Sierra Nevada Mountains (Spain). |
| VerfasserIn |
María José Pérez-Palazón, Rafael Pimentel, Javier Herrero, María José Polo |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2016
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
en
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 18 (2016) |
| Datensatznummer |
250135769
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2016-16674.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Soil moisture conditions the energy and water fluxes through the ground surface and
constitutes a major hydrological state variable in the analysis of environmental processes.
Detecting potential changes in soil moisture and analyzing their trend over a long period of
study can help to understand its evolution in other similar areas and to estimate its future role.
In mountainous areas, the snow distribution highly conditions soil water content and its
implications on the local water cycle. Sierra Nevada, Southern Spain, is a linear mountain
range, with altitude higher than 3000 m.a.s.l., where Mediterranean and alpine
climates coexist. The snow dynamics dominates the hydrological regime, and the
medium and long term trends observed in the snow persistence constitute one of the
main potential drivers for soil moisture changes both on a seasonal and annual
basis.
This work presents a 50-yr study of the soil moisture trends in Sierra Nevada (SN); the
distributed monthly mean soil moisture evolution during the recent past (1960-2010) is
simulated and its relationship with meteorological variables (precipitation and temperature)
analyzed in the five head river basins that the SN area comprises. For this, soil water content
is simulated throughout the area by means of WiMMed, a distributed and physically
based hydrological model developed for Mediterranean regions that includes snow
modelling, which had been previously calibrated and validated in the study area. The
analysis of soil moisture shows a globally decreasing annual rate, with a mean
value of 0.0011 mm⋅mm−1⋅year−1 during the study period averaged over the whole
study area, which locally ranges between 0.174 mm⋅mm−1⋅year−1 and 0.0014
mm⋅mm−1⋅year−1.
As previous studies reported, the observed trend in precipitation is more influent than
temperature on the snowfall regime change; therefore, as expected, the estimated trends of
soil moisture are more related to this variable. Moreover, an increase of the occurrence of
torrential events was found in the monthly analysis. The results allow to identify singular
zones within area to monitor the potential significant changes in the soil moisture pattern due
to the shifts in snow regime. |
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